


And This Pain We Feel

by sometimesophie



Category: Carol Berg - Transformation series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:51:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sometimesophie/pseuds/sometimesophie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if. [the story deals with sex within slavery and, while the noncon is not explicit, please heed the warning]</p>
            </blockquote>





	And This Pain We Feel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rosethorn Li](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Rosethorn+Li).



i. Once, it is said, there was a great magician enslaved by an empire and given to its prince. The prince was a spoiled boy of seven winters and did not know the treasure he possessed. He mocked the magician’s culture, screamed at the magician when he did not get his way, beat him and starved him when he did not obey the prince’s commands. The magician was only a youth himself, a mere eighteen years old, and he had already suffered far more than most ever would in their lifetimes. His religion forbade him to take his own life, but the magician looked for death and found it at the proud, spoilt hands of the young prince.

The prince had sealed his own destiny. When the demons came, the one man who could have warned the prince, who could have protected him and saved his life, had been executed sixteen years earlier for spilling hot tea on the prince’s foot.

The prince died, the empire fell, and the demons claimed the world.

ii. Being fit in body and pleasant to the eye was a double-edged knife. Some slaves cultivated their good looks, did all within their meagre means, rubbed their fingers with animal fat to keep the skin there soft, bit their lips to a plump, reddened throb. They sought out their rapists, knelt with spread legs and coquette eyes, and arched up against their bonds with pretty cries of pain and rapture. In return, they might be granted more food, a pallet instead of straw, gentle hands instead of cruel fists. They might be allowed to keep the hair on their head or be spared the more arduous, dangerous tasks a household had to offer.

If granted the choice, Seyonne would choose to crawl up the rickety ladder in the middle of a snowstorm to smash the deadly icicles hanging from above the palace’s giant doors than crawl into bed with the prince. He knew where the real danger lay.

Prince Aleksander would call him to scribe for him, then bed him. It was a regular enough occurrence to be called routine, however much Seyonne wished to deny the unwanted, unlooked for attention. He would wait at the writing desk, hands curled small and tight in his lap, staring down at the polished grain in front of him. “Come,” Aleksander would say, turning to the door of his personal chambers without sparing a glance back. He didn’t need to, after all. Seyonne would always follow, careful not to drag his feet, careful to keep his expression schooled. Careful.

Aleksander could be rough, but he wasn’t cruel. Afterwards, there was no conversation and Seyonne would leave, a slight limp in his walk. Durgan would give him half again his normal food rations on those days, would assign him only light duties the following morning, and Seyonne had never asked the slavemaster whether it was his own kindness he was acting upon or a ruling from Aleksander. It was safer to leave some things unvoiced in the Derzhi palace. Respite given could just as easily be taken away.

Once, just once, with Seyonne lying on his back and Aleksander leaning heavily over him, Seyonne thought Aleksander really _looked_ at him. Looked, and didn’t just see the shaved head, the slave tunic, the scarred back, the Ezzarian colouring. Something in the furrowed brown, the hitch of hesitation mid-thrust, the manner in which his eyes traced his features, and for a brief, breathless, terrifying moment, Seyonne felt like _Seyonne_ again.

Then Aleksander put a hand to his cheek, a warm, firm touch, and traced down, smooth and dry, until his fingers gripped Seyonne’s chin, turning his face into the light.

“Such perfect skin,” he murmured. “I know women with rougher faces than yours.”

Of course, Seyonne thought, surprised at the sharp tang of bitterness on his tongue. Once a whore, always a whore. Nothing more.

iii. The Khelid’s eyes were pale blue and seared like the touch of frozen steel. Trembling, Seyonne crouched before him, head bowed. Powerless.

“For a mere slave, I find your presence… troubling,” the Khelid murmured.

Fingers gripped into Seyonne’s tunic, twisted, pulling him up from his knees. The Khelid’s breath was soft and sweet against his cheek, the smell of sweetmeats and decay, and Seyonne gagged on it as he wrenched against the grip, desperate, needing with all his struggling soul to get away.

When the demon’s eyes met his and held, enfolding him in the icy embrace of ancient, bloody evil, Seyonne went limp.

The Khelid tilted his head to one side, studying him.

“I see,” he said, finally. A slow smile touched his dry lips. “How does it feel, little warrior, to know I will kill you here, in the palace of your masters, and no one will care?”

The effort to shut his eyes made his teeth ache and his skull throb, but when the killing blow came, Seyonne would be looking into darkness, not the pale blue of the very depths of hell.

iv. There were better places to be than the palace when Prince Aleksander of Azhakstan and his new wife, Princess Lydia, were at odds. And there were _much_ better places - such as the mines and the new sewage ditches being dug in the old quarter, for example - when the prince and his lady were more specifically fighting about you.

Kneeling in the middle of the floor, Seyonne kept his head down and his eyes fixed on the intricate swirl of gold and red woven into the rug. His back hurt, nerves throbbing along the lines of broken flesh, this morning’s whipping still too fresh to be comfortably pushed to the back of his mind.

“He is my slave. I may treat him however I see fit.”

“And what did he do to deserve such treatment? Insult your lineage? Call your honour into doubt? Question your skill on the battlefield? Please enlighten me, husband, as to what behaviour merits such a beating.”

Seyonne wished there was a way he could ask her not to fight his side. It did him little good. He had dropped a plate while serving. That alone might have been enough to secure a stint on the post,  but the plate in question had held meat, a joint of which had fetched up against the foot of a minor member of royalty visiting from the far south. During the screaming and furious shouting that followed, Seyonne gathered that their society was forbidden to eat or even touch meat by their gods. Grimly, Aleksander had sentenced him to ten lashes, and Seyonne had felt lucky at that. It would have more easily saved a diplomatic incident if he’d just ordered him dead and be done with it.

Seyonne didn’t need to look up to see them both; he had seen variations of these proceedings play out in any number of ways since the wedding five months ago, and he had the movements of both actors committed to memory. Aleksander, surly and in danger of getting surlier, slouched low in his throne, resentful. Lydia standing tall and unrelenting, perfectly within her matrimonial rights to summon her prince to the royal assembly room. Sometimes, when it was bad between them, rehashing old arguments in different guises might be the longest they shared in each other’s company the entire week.

“This conversation tires me. I could have him sentenced to death for breathing if it offended me. Now if that is all?”

The pause overhead was heavy with ill-feeling. Then, with a swish of her skirts as she walked past him, Lydia said, “Come on, Seyonne.”

Wincing a little from the strain on his back, Seyonne was half-way to rising when Aleksander’s voice stopped him.

“No. He stays here.”

Eyes still carefully fixed to the ground, Seyonne sank to his creaking knees again and stayed there, head bowed down against the rug. He heard Lady Lydia’s footsteps stop in the doorway behind him.

“What, you think I plan on killing him here?” Aleksander asked. His voice was hard and dangerous, no trace of humour in it, and Seyonne swallowed. He knew that voice and he sent up a silent prayer that the lady would leave without further challenge. Nothing good could come of her staying.

After a tense stretch of seconds, her footsteps continued on, receding down the corridor, away.

It was too early to breathe a sigh of relief. The room was so quiet that he could hear the rustle of expensive fabric as the prince stood up and walked down from the platform. Seyonne pressed his forehead flat against the rug and wished himself as small as possible. Being anywhere near Aleksander when he was in so foul a mood was never advisable.

Aleksander’s boots stopped by his head.

“Sometimes, Seyonne, I think you’re more trouble than you’re worth.” The words were quiet with rage and his spit-shined boots were unmoving: a dangerous combination. “Ever since I bought you, you’ve caused me headaches. With your burnt face, and your insolence, and the way you watch and judge and never tell me truthfully what you’re thinking. And now, it seems, even my wife champions you. Even has the _audacity_ to tell me off when it is you who are at fault." Aleksander’s voice was silky soft with threat. "Tell me, Seyonne. What use is such a troublesome slave to his master?”

“I do not know, my lord,” Seyonne answered, truthfully, his voice muffled by the floor.

Above him, there was a silence. Then:

“Get out of my sight.”

As quickly as his aching back allowed, Seyonne escaped from the room.

  
1\. There was an Ezzarian at the birthing party of the new heir to the Derzhi Empire. He sat quietly to the right of Emperor Aleksander, hair neatly tied back at his nape, hands in his lap. He refused the service of the royal slaves - his voice soft and polite, yet firm - his own sure, scarred hands helping themselves to bread and meat and water. An adept observer would have seen the amused twitch of the Emperor’s lips when he noticed, the way he leant into the other man to mutter something private close to his ear, the way in which the Ezzarian rolled his eyes and murmured something back.

No one knew the Ezzarian’s name. Nor where he came from. Nor what he was doing seated in the place of honour on an occasion only the oldest and most loyal of Derzhi families were invited. He was a foreigner, an affront to the eyes - both in colouring and the ugly scar that consumed half his face. Yet the Lady Lydia kissed that very same scarred cheek; the Emperor dedicated himself to him throughout the night, jealous of his attentions, eyes laughing and then serious in turn; and, when it came time to present the new prince, Aleksander placed the tiny, squalling bundle of his only son into the man’s arms.

In an uncharacteristically wise move, not one member of the oldest, most loyal Derzhi families questioned the Ezzarian’s right to attend.


End file.
